Is beef still an essential part of our diet? Or is
growing awareness of the hidden environmental and health costs of
beef consumption leading more and more Americans beyond beef? To
help you understand this important new trend, we have prepared this
briefing kit of facts about rainforest destruction, resource
depletion, global warming, world hunger, human disease, animal
suffering and other compelling reasons why more Americans are eating
less beef.

QUOTABLE QUOTES

HEALTH

"If you step back and look at the data, the optimum amount of red
meat you eat should be zero."-- WALTER WILLETT, M.D., of Brigham and Women's Hospital, director of a study that found a close correlation between red meat consumption and colon cancer
"Usually, the first thing a country does in the course of economic
development is to introduce a lot of livestock. Our data are showing that this
is not a very smart move and the Chinese are listening. They are realizing
that animal-based agriculture is not the way to go....We are basically a
vegetarian species and should be eating a wide variety of plant food and
minimizing our intake of animal foods...."Once people start introducing
animal products into their diet, that's when the mischief starts." -- T. COLIN CAMPBELL, PH.D., of Cornell University, director of a study of 6,500 Chinese that found a close correlation between meat consumption and the incidence of heart disease and cancer
"The beef industry has contributed to more American deaths than
all the wars of this century, all natural disasters, and all automobile
accidents combined. If beef is your idea of 'real food for real people,' you'd
better live real close to a real good hospital." -- NEAL. D. BARNARD, M.D., President, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. Washington, D.C.
"When we kill the animals to eat them, they end up killing us
because their flesh, which contains cholesterol and saturated fat, was never
intended for human beings." -- William C. Roberts, M.D., editor ofThe American Journal of Cardiology
"All red meat contains saturated fat. There is no such thing as
truly lean meat. Trimming away the edge ring of fat around a steak really does
not lower the fat content significantly. People who have red meat (trimmed or
untrimmed) as a regular feature of their diets suffer in far greater numbers
from heart attacks and strokes." -- MICHAEL KLAPER, M.D., Medical Director, EarthSave Foundation, Santa Cruz, California
"The thousands of people who have suffered food poisoning after
eating beef will, no doubt, appreciate that their beef was aesthetically
acceptable, even though it made them ill. 'Lovely to look at, dangerous to
eat' is not a standard that is likely to help beef sales." -- CAROL TUCKER FOREMAN, Assistant Secretary of Agriculture during the Carter administration, commenting on the inadequacy of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Streamlined (Meat) inspection System (SIS)
"As happened with tobacco, health warnings about meat eating are
multiplying, and awareness of the environmental effects of meat production is
rising. Just as cigarettes lost their allure, meat is losing its social cachet
in some countries. Food marketers in the United Kingdom estimate that 2
million people in that country are strict vegetarians. More important, the
number of people limiting meat in their diets is rising rapidly. An estimated
6 million people in the United Kingdom dine on meatless meals most of the
time." -- ALAN B. DURNING AND HOLLY B. BROUGH, in Taking Stock: Animal Farming and the Environment, Worldwatch Institute, Washington, D.C., 1991

ENVIRONMENT

"An alien ecologist observing... Earth might conclude that cattle
is the dominant animal species in our biosphere." -- DAVID HAMILTON WRIGHT, PH.D., Emery University biologist
"The impact of countless hooves and mouths over the years has done
more to alter the type of vegetation and land forms of the West than all the
water projects, strip mines, power plants, freeways, and subdivision
developments combined." -- PHILIP FRADKIN in Audubon, National Audubon Society, New York, New York
"Most of the public lands in the West, and especially the
Southwest, are what you might call 'cow burnt.' Almost anywhere and everywhere
you goin the American West you find hordes of [cows]....They are a pest and a
plague. They pollute our springs and streams and rivers. They infest our
canyons, valleys, meadows, and forests. They graze off the native bluestems
and grama and bunch grasses, leaving behind jungles of prickly pear. They
trample down the native forbs and shrubs and cacti. They spread the exotic
cheatgrass, the Russian thistle, and the crested wheat grass. Weeds. Even when
the cattle are not physically present, you see the dung and the flies and the
mud and the dust and the general destruction. If you don't see it, you'll
smell it. The whole American West Stinks of cattle." -- The late EDWARD ABBEY, conservationist and author, in a speech before cattlemen at the University of Montana in 1985
"You can buy the land out there now for the same price as a couple
of bottles of beer per acre. When you've got half a million acres and 20,000
head of cattle, you can leave the lousy place and go live in Paris, Hawaii,
Switzerland, or anywhere you choose." -- American rancher who owns grazing land in the Amazon, descrihing the attitude of cattle colonists in the Brazilian rain forest
"We got hooked on grain-fed meat just as we got hooked on gas
guzzling automobiles. Big cars 'made sense' only when oil was cheap; grain-fed
meat 'makes sense' only because the true costs of producing it are not
counted." -- FRANCES MOORE LAPPE , in Diet for a Small Planet
"A reduction in beef and other meat consumption is the most potent
single act you can take to halt the destruction of our environment and
preserve our natural resources. Our choices do matter. What's healthiest for
each of us personally is also healthiest for the life support system of our
precious, but wounded planet." -- JOHN ROBBINS, author of Diet for a New America, and President, EarthSave Foundation, Santa Cruz, California

HUNGER AND POVERTY

"It seems disingenuous for the intellectual elite of the first
world to dwell on the subject of too many babies being born in the second and
third-world nations while virtually ignoring the overpopulation of cattle and
the realities of a food chain that robs the poor of sustenance to feed the
rich a steady diet of grain-fed meat." -- JEREMY RIFKIN, author of Beyond Beef, The Rise and Fall of the Cattle Culture, and President of the Greenhouse Crisis Foundation, Washington, D.C.
"A meat-fed world now appears a chimera. World grain production
has grown more slowly than population since 1984, and farmers lack new methods
for repeating the gains of the 'green revolution.' Supporting the world's
current population of 5.4 bilion people on an American-style diet would
require two-and-a-half times as much grain as the world's farmers produce for
all purposes. A future world of 8 billion to 14 billion people eating the
American ration of 220 grams of grain-fed meat a day can be nothing but a
flight of fancy." -- ALAN B. DURNING AND HOLLY B. BROUGH, Worldwatch Institute, Washington, D.C.
"There can be no question that more hunger can be alleviated with
a given quantity of grain by completely eliminating animals [from the food
production process]. About 2,000 pounds of concentrates [grains] must be
supplied to livestock in order to produce enough meat and other livestock
products to support a person for a year, whereas 400 pounds of grain (corn,
wheat, rice, soybeans, etc.) eaten directly will support a person for a year.
Thus, a given quantity of grain eaten directly will feed 5 times as many
people as it will if it is first fed to livestock and then is eaten indirectly
by humans in the form of livestock products...." -- M.E. ENSMINGER, PH.D., internationally recognized animal agriculture specialist, former Department of Animal Science Chairman at Washington State University, currently President of,
Consultants-Agriservices , Clovis, California
"Changing eating habits in the North is an important link in the
chain of events needed to create environmentally sustainable development that
meets people's needs. The Beyond Beef campaign is an important step in that
direction." -- DR. WALDEN BELLO, Executive Director, Food First/The Institute for Food and Development Policy, San Francisco, California
"Suppose food were distributed equally. If everyone in the world
ate as Americans do, less than half the present world population could be fed
on the record harvests of 1985 and 1986. Of course, everyone doesn't have to
eat like Americans. About a third of the world grain harvest -- the staples of
the human feeding base -- is fed to animals to produce eggs, milk, and meat
for American- style diets. Wouldn't feeding that grain directly to people
solve the problem? If everyone were willing to eat an essentially vegetarian
diet, that additional grain would allow perhaps a billion more people to be
fed with 1986 production." -- PAUL R. EHRLICH AND ANNE H. EHRLICH, authors Of The Population Explosion, 1990
"Family farmers are victims of public policy that gives preference
to feeding animals over feeding people. This has encouraged the cheap grain
policy of this nation and has made the Beef Cartel the biggest hog at the
trough." -- HOWARD LYMAN, Executive Director, Beyond Beef campaign, former senior lobbyist for the National Farmers Union

ANIMAL SUFFERING

"In my opinion, one of the greatest animal-welfare problems is the
physical abuse of livestock during transportation.... Typical abuses I have
witnessed with alarming frequency are: hitting, beating, use of badly
maintained trucks, jabbing of short objects into animals, and deliberate
cruelty." -- TEMPLE GRANDIN, PH.D., internationally recognized livestock handling consultant and hoard member of the meat industry's Livestock Conservation Institute
"For most humans, especially for those in modern urban and
suburban communities, the most direct form of contact with non-human animals
is at meal time: we eat them....The use and abuse of animals raised for food
far exceeds, in sheer numbers of animals affected, any other kind of
mistreatment." -- PETER SINGER, author of Animal Liberation, and professor of philosophy at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
"The amount of meat lost each year through careless handling and
brutality would be enough to feed a million Americans for a year. -- JOHN MCFARLANE, Executive Director, The Council for Livestock Protection, a meat industry organization
"I know, in my soul, that to eat a creature who is raised to be
eaten, and who never has a chance to be a real being, is unhealthy. It's
like...you're just eating misery. You're eating a bitter life." --ALICE WALKER, author and poet
"in fact, if one person is unkind to an animal it is considered to
be cruelty, but where a lot of people are unkind to animals, especially in the
name of commerce, the cruelty is condoned and, once large sums of money are at
stake, will be defended to the last by otherwise intelligent people."
-- RUTH HARRISON, author of Animal Machines
"Yet saddest of all fates, surely, is to have lost that sense of
the holiness of life altogether; that we commit the blasphemy of bringing
thousands of lives to a cruel and terrifying death or of making those lives a
living death -- and feel nothing." -- THE RIGHT REVEREND JOHN AUSTIN BAKER, Bishop of Salishury, England, commenting on the cruelty of modern animal agriculture
"You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse
is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity."
-- RALPH WALDO EMERSON in Fate